Today in my sociology class my teacher said that most of the people there would never become successful, though maybe a few would become so. This greatly irritated me because I feel that I am very successful for being eighteen years old. It does not take much to be successful. I’m only eighteen, but I’m a lifeguard and EMT and have various other certifications. I became an EMT while trying to finish my senior year of high school, decide which college I was going to and wait months to take my state test while running as a student and working as a lifeguard at a summer camp. I have had three jobs in my life and I have loved all three of them. Last summer I worked as a lifeguard and during my off hours worked with the ambulance. During this school year I work with a health department ten or more hours a week while studying pre-med and going home most weekends to work as an EMT. How do these things not make me a success?

I am working hard, helping people, and having fun doing it. I find what I am doing in my life at this time to be very successful for an eighteen year old, and I can only get more successful from here. Success is not getting rich or becoming famous. Success is doing what you want with your life and your career and being happy doing it. There’s a common quote, “Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” I work my ass off at all my jobs, but it’s not work, it’s enjoyable. It may exhaust me but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I wouldn’t trade riches or fame for the thankfulness in a persons eyes. We may not always get the thanks we deserve, but it’s worth helping them.

I once had a sixteen year old roll over car accident victim. She was not badly hurt and socialized with use all the way to the hospital and we actually know the families very well of both the girls in the accident. They were so great full to us, but what I remember most is that the girl was so utterly surprised and great full that we gave our time to come help her and we do not get paid to do it. Several of the family members expressed their thanks for our help. This is what I call success.

In everything you do you should give it everything you have because you ever know where it can take you in life. Something you do as a teenager “just for the hell of it” can change what happens to you in the future for the better or for the worse. Something you do when you’re young can go on your record or can be remembered by people for a very long time, just as something you do good and do to help something can be remembered by many people for many years to come.

I have not posted for a while because I was sick with mono for weeks and was not able to do much of anything besides go to class, work, and sleep. I came to college this fall and without knowing it, I was already carrying the illness, so of course since I am living in very close quarters with about a hundred other people, I gave it to a good portion of the dorm. During my illness I was sick for about three weeks before I got medical care and I was too busy, I’m over an hour away from my doctors and the hospitals I trust, I didn’t have the time. I would drive home on the weekends to rest and hopefully get better there, finally after about three weeks with my symptoms only getting worse I went to the Prompt Care back home. I was diagnosed with bronchitis and was given medications to clear everything out. I went to bed that night and finally got to sleep around 5 am, when I woke up the next morning the medicine had kicked in and everything was draining into my throat, the problem being that my throat had swollen over during the night leaving it very difficult to breath or swollen so my throat was filling up with drainage and at some points I was incapable of breathing. So me and my dad returned to the prompt care, but this time when they looked at my throat and thought I might have an abscess and sent me to the Emergency Room. This was slightly frightening because there is throat cancer in my family, and an abscess being similar to a benign tumor would most likely have to be biopsied for cancer. I texted many friends and requested prayers for my well-being. After much wait, blood tests and a CT scan, and being given saline fluids and steroids and other medication for pain and swelling, I was informed I had mono, and there was basically nothing that could be done. I was on steroids for a week for my throat swelling over.

What was very irritating to me during this time is eventually other people started having mono around me, they would skip class, claim they “almost died”. It made me angry because I did not miss one day of class for mono, and most of these people did not have any difficulties getting over the illness and did not even have to go to the hospital, while I had to spend basically a full weekend in prompt care and the ER for it. I still can’t play sports, be rough, and have to be careful because my immune system is low so I could bet sick and my organs have swelled a great deal during this time and still are. This is the sickest I have ever been in my life and I managed to miss not a single class because of being too sick, though it would take me a great deal longer for me to get where I was going because my chest would hurt so bad and it was so difficult to breath. I was able to continue normal life about a week and a half after diagnosis with a nap here and there. I am able to hang out with friends and take care of medical needs. And I was able to do all this despite have mono because I am not going to give up on my goals, I have to keep my grades up and be there for classes and get homework done, and attend my job. I’m not going to give up.

Sometimes you hold on to something because you think you need it, or you don’t want to hurt someone else, or you are scared of losing something you have had or so long. In relationships it’s important to know when you should let you go. No matter how long you have been together, there may come a time when it’s not going to work anymore. You may still love that person, you may always love that person, but there comes a point where you don’t feel loved anymore, sometimes you stop caring about what happens to the relationship. You’ve tried over and over again to fix things, but you get tired of being the only one trying, tired of being the only one upset when they don’t see the other for weeks end, and there comes a point when you no longer care that you didn’t see them because you’re so used to it, you have other things to do now. It may hurt at first, but it’s for the best.

One of the biggest parts of maturity is properly dealing with our anger. If you have a problem with someone you need to confront them about it, and not going around being a jerk, ignoring them and doing immature things towards them such as switching seats just so you don’t have to deal with the issue. I don’t care if you have a problem with me, but at least have the decency to act like an adult about the situation, when you are eighteen years old you need to realize you need to grow up.

If you become anger with someone, do not going and pout or do things as “pay back”, trying to hurt them. Calmly tell them why you are angry and figure out how to move on from them. You have to deal with the problem sometime especially if you are going to see them very often in the next few years.